Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Sunday, May 01, 2016

The Green War Against the Working Class

There was a time in America—and it wasn’t even so long ago—that
liberals actually cared about working class people. They may have been
misguided in many of their policy solutions (i.e., raising the minimum
wage) but at least their heart was in the right place.

Then a strange thing happened about a decade ago. The radical
leftwing environmentalists took control. These are people who care more
about the supposed rise of the oceans than the financial survival of the
middle class. The industrial unions made a catastrophic decision to get
in bed with these radicals and now they—and all of us—are paying a
heavy price.

The latest evidence came last week when another coal giant in
America, Peabody Energy Corp., declared bankruptcy. This is the same
fate suffered by Arch Coal Inc., Alpha Natural Resources Inc., and other
coal producers that have filed for Chapter 11 protection from
creditors.

Peabody has stated that the lower cost of natural gas may have been a
factor in their decline, and I am all for market competition, but this
isn’t a result of free market creative destruction. This was largely a
policy strategy by the White House and green groups.

They wanted this to happen. This was what Clean Power Plant rules from the Environmental Protection Agency were all about.

The EPA set standards by design that were impossible to meet and even
flouted the law that says the regulations should be “commercially
achievable.” This was a key component of the climate change fanaticism
that pervades this White House.

Progressive liberals don’t seem to care that an estimated 31,000 coal
miners, truckers, engineers, construction workers and others have lost
their job since 2009 as a result of this global warming fanaticism.
Another 5,000 or so could be given pink slips at Peabody.

...America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have an estimated 500-year
supply. So for economic and ecological reasons, we should want American
coal to dominate the world market, but the mindless environmentalists’
rallying cry is: “Keep it in the ground.”

Do liberals care that the demise of coal could lead to major disruptions in America’s electric power supply?

Coal still supplies more than one-third of our electricity, because
it is cheap and highly reliable—much more so than wind and solar energy.
Perhaps the millennials will realize their mistake when they won’t be
able to power up their PlayStation 4s, their iPhones, and their laptops.

Republicans in Congress aren’t blameless here. They have controlled
the House for five years and both chambers since 2015. But they have sat
by while the EPA destroys an iconic American industry.
Why has Congress not overruled EPA rules on carbon, which is not
a pollutant? Every poll shows Americans care most about jobs and the
economy—and only about 3 percent care most about climate change. Yet,
they refuse to stand up to Obama and take the side of the American
worker.